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Title: In Defense of Omnivorousness
Author: Wildroots
Language: en
Topics: food, primitivism, rewilding, veganism
Source: Retrieved on February 16, 2011 from http://flag.blackened.net/radicalanthropology/writings/wildroots-omni.htm

Wildroots

In Defense of Omnivorousness

Anarchist literature tends to be saturated with vegan and vegetarian

propaganda, and I don’t think our canon should be so singular and I’d

like to present an idea that is not necessarily in opposition of those

ideas, but is a better alternative. So I’ll share with you my ideas on

nutrition and the ethics and politics of putting food in our faces, and

maybe I’ll even give reasons for why I hold these opinions. First though

a bit on my credibility — I’ve never tried veganism for its own sake

(occasionally I notice that I’ve gone many days without animal products,

but I don’t go and eat steak tartar and veal as a response!) So I’m

sorry I can’t speak from experience here, but I have read a lot about

veganism and vegetarianism and have talked to many people about it, and

was never sufficiently motivated to try either. I respect the people who

practice them and agree with the reasons for why they do it, the

conventional meat industry is absurdly destructive to people and nature.

First off my maxim on nutrition, “If you hunger for it, find it tasty,

and it is natural, then you will do no harm to yourself or the

environment in eating it, and you probably should”. Obviously that is a

bit naïve when applied to people that have potentially fatal food

allergies. Those are a problem of civilization like asthma or

osteoporosis or suicide, car accidents, and testicular cancer being the

main cause of death in my demographic. So I won’t worry about it because

civilization will soon shrivel and die because I am aborting and many

others soon will.

If you hunger for it. We are animals, and we have instincts just as

strong as every other life form. Animals have ethics too: they don’t

systematically exterminate their competitors — lions do not kill or

injure hyenas unless they are invading a kill inappropriately- animals

do not systematically exterminate the competitors of their food supply —

deer do not cut off and spit out undesirable plants because they are

competing with the desirable plants. However civilized human do and

these are pathological traits that will lead to the destruction of the

civilized human and will and has caused the extinction of many life

forms in the process. Farmers kill “pests”, coyotes, wolves, raccoons,

weasels, mink, and ‘possums to protect the animals and plants that have

been artificially selected to be too weak to protect or provide for

themselves. Gardeners and farmers kill “weeds” that are in competition

with the food supply.Our natural instincts will guide us to eat properly

when we choose from natural foods. “Primitive” people 15,000 years ago

were healthier and often lived longer than we currently do even without

complex vitamin charts and nutrition textbooks. This is because they

listened to their natural instincts (and because they partook from about

1500 species of plants, and most species of animals, insects,

amphibians, and reptiles) with that amount of variety they couldn’t help

butget all their “vitamins and minerals”, and I think their bodies told

them what foods contained elements that were most essential at any given

time. You can call it hunger, or craving, or anything you like, the

important thing is that their lifestyle was motivated by the intense

primitive emotions that have taken civilization 10,000 years to learn to

repress. More specifically the society thinks it has oppressed them to

keep us weak , docile, and hungry for its continuation depends on these

— but it isn’t perfect — I still feel them and I think you do too!

Therefore civilization cannot go on forever emotions are too powerful to

suppress. Go and live in the real world unmediated! It is profound and

dangerous! Do not accept the surrogate emotions from television, video

games, movies, books, consumerism, political power, or spectator sports!

Make real experience.

and find it tasty -Your taste is how your body informs you what you do

or don’t need, and when you’ve had enough. If it didn’t work for that

purpose then the human species would have died out before we had

specialists to tell us what is good and what us not, what is banal and

what is gourmet, and what is healthy and what is unhealthy. In defense

of omnivorousness, I find meat and insects to be very delicious and so

did every tribal society that has been studied by anthropologists (if

you trust those specialists). I think you would find it delicious too!

Then you will do no harm to yourself or the environment in eating it I

consider natural synonymous with wild, beef is not natural, chicken is

not natural, milk products are not natural — these not part of a

primitive or aboriginal diet. Those animals did not exist 15,000 years

ago and there is no method for getting milk products from wild animals.

Obviously the precursors to modern domestic animals did exist, and they

lived wild and on their own terms of survival. Modern polyploid grains

and vegetables are not natural and they are nutritionally inferior to

their wild ancestors. Modern wheat is 12% protein while wild wheat is

24% protein. Protein is for growing strong healthy bodies, whereas the

remaining grain is made of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are fuel for

doing work (or making fat reserves if you aren’t working at the same

rate you are eating). Which makes sense when you consider that

hunter/gatherers of the world do only 2–4 hours of work a day and us

smart civilized people with our “labor-saving devices” work about 12–14

hours a day (unfortunately women in our society work significantly more

than that) so we need that unnatural excess of carbohydrates to do all

that extra labor.

Veganism and vegetarianism is only possible in the civilized world of

B12 shots, vitamin supplements, strict and scientific dietary regimens

and heavily processed soy products. These are dependant on the very

system that exterminates life forms at an astonishing rate, which is a

contradiction of the vegan ideals. I do not believe that these harmful

effects can be eliminated from civilization; the entire package must be

dumped to solve those problems.

What is the fundamental difference between killing a plant, an insect,

an animal, an amphibian or a reptile anyway? Some people say plants

don’t feel pain or comprehend their death. We may be more or less

perceptive or empathetic of the changes they go through in anticipation

of death, but all life forms go through those changes and they could all

be called pain. Plants shrivel and wilt and their roots are slowly

consumed by soil bacteria when they die and they send out chemical

signals to alert nearby plants of danger (so they can boost their immune

systems in case the danger is a disease). How can we discount the

importance of their analogous screams and convulsions just because we

can’t easily perceive them as such?

I do not condone eating conventional, domesticated animal products, or

even plants products because they are raised in a manner disgraceful to

life on earth, and often in ways that cause death row life forms that do

not provide sustenance for the killers: coyotes die, “pests” die, soil

bacteria doe, wolves dies, waters are poisoned, the atmosphere is

polluted, “weeds” die, forests are cleared of ultra-productive

ecosystems to make room for our paltry fields of grains, vegetables, and

pastures. I propose we receive from the earth what is provided for us,

rather than forcibly stealing land to use as we see fit and

incarcerating animals to abuse and eat. Let’s minimize the amount of all

life that we take rather than minimizing the death of an exclusive

category of life that we artificially deem more important. Here is a

scale that in my opinion accurately represents the amount of earth and

life harmed in the production of a food source:

The further left you go on the chart, less damage is done to the

environment and life in general. I’m trying to go all the way, but the

milieu makes it quite difficult. Please everyone do the best you can!

Stop raping the earth and taking from it whatever you desire, relax and

trust that your needs will be met and trust yourself and you will be

provided for free of charge. The earth is generous!